


The Grey Area

by Peapods



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s03e11 Q and the Grey, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10331087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: Motherhood is a touchy subject, but if you can't talk about it with your lizard-baby-daddy chief pilot, who can you?





	

Kathryn Janeway was filthy and aching, but exhilarated. She started picking at the pins in her hair letting dusty curls tumble haphazardly around her face. She may have gone years wearing a similar bun, but the ancient methods--Q was nothing if not historically accurate--had left her head sore and itchy. She scratched and shook her head then stripped off her jacket.

The Q had been ignoring them and her crew were standing around, leaning on muskets, pulling at belts and looking generally like they were having a good time despite the dire circumstances that had brought them to the Continuum. Tom, in particular, looked like he was living the dream. He noticed her noticing and came over, smiling large, and tipped his hat.

"I'll say this for them, what they lack in manners, they make up for with sheer brainpower," he said, taking a good look around the forest.

"Please, don't let them hear you say that," Kathryn groaned. The ring holding her skirt at such a stiff angle was really starting to bother her, digging relentlessly into her hips as she stood there. Tom seemed to notice.

"Don't suppose the underwear that goes with that outfit is crew appropriate," he commented and she laughed, almost chastising herself for doing so, but then letting it go. It had been a tough couple of days and while part of her always kind of wanted to laugh at Q's antics, the mature part of her had to hold it in and retain the moral high ground. Tom always seemed to make it okay to laugh.

"If it were, I would have stripped down hours ago," she admitted. "Never thought I'd actually have to say this, but thank God for feminism."

Tom laughed, throwing back his head and losing his hat. She laughed herself as he fell over himself to pick it up.

"Well, let's at least find you a place to sit. I get the feeling we might be here a little longer," he said jerking his head toward the gathered Q, who were sitting around a table speaking intently. He offered his arm and drawled, "Ma’am?"

She hit him first, then took the arm as the shoes weren't exactly feathers and pillows either. He led her to a tree stump and she lowered herself gratefully, if not gracefully, onto it.

"This has certainly satisfied my quota for antiquated roleplay," she told him.

"No more gothic mysteries?"

"Not even to play the man," she said. He lowered himself to the ground in front of her and crossed his legs.

"So, no omnipotent mommyhood for you either," he said, not even bothering with tact.

She snorted, "Mommyhood, Tom?"

He shrugged, grinning unapologetically.

"No, there was very little chance I was going to play Mary to the Continuum's Jesus."

"Somehow I doubt, despite the little scene we just saw, Q's intentions were quite so virtuous."

She laughed despite herself. "What I want to know is where he got the idea that any of those things worked!"

Tom laughed, but sobered, looking pensive, "I don't think he really thought they would."

She raised a brow, "Really?"

"Yeah, I mean, from what we know, Q, that particular Q, is all about obfuscation. He always has an ulterior motive. I think he wanted you to press him. Learn the truth."

"But why me?"

"Because of Quinn?" Tom asked rhetorically. "You managed to adjudicate the right to life or death for a _Q_."

"You're saying he wanted me to help him. He wanted--"

"A way out. An alternative. You told Quinn that he should try out being a mortal, see what it was like to see through our eyes. I think Q... well," he shrugged again and looked off into the forest.

Kathryn was a little nonplussed though. Tom had never been a big "thinker" in her estimation. He was intelligent, undoubtedly, but he had never seemed overly philosophical.

"What? What do you think?"

He sighed and tugged off his cap, scratching at matted blond locks. "He thought having a kid, passing on new genes and new ideas, was the answer to years of stagnation. What could be more human than that?"

She stared at her pilot, dumbfounded because he was right. Q had come to her looking for human ingenuity, looking for the way out he thought he couldn't see. But in fact, he had managed to do something far more human that he thought. Children weren't simply for population. They weren't simply for the whim of family and love. They were also vessels. They were instruments of learning and change. Some followed their parents' footsteps without falter. Others, though, struck out and forged new paths and societies. The perpetuity of humanity was rooted in those ideas. Parents and grandparents were sometimes stuck in their times, but children...

"Tom," she shook her head, unable to stop smiling. "You never cease to amaze me."

He was startled, it seemed, and a warm red came to his cheeks as he smiled and ducked his head. "Aw, shucks, ma'am," he said.

She chuckled. She looked out over her people, some of them talking with a few more enthusiastic looking Q. Harry Kim was either describing how to toss stir-fry or was giving that poor Q some very wrong ideas about sex among humans. She cracked her neck with an audible snap, forcing a short groan from her throat.

“How _do_ you deal with all those painful human frailties!” Q asked as he appeared at Tom’s side, staring at Kathryn with incredulity. “I only did it for a few days and I wanted to _die_!”

“And yet you were ready to subject a child to the same genetic material?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Well, obviously the tyke would have been mostly Q.”

“Obviously,” Tom said in a tone of sarcastic agreement. “Wouldn’t want any of those pesky, ingenious human cooties messing with perfection.”

“Quite right,” Q sniffed. “I really don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Well, I’m thinking perhaps it’s time you got us back to our ship,” Kathryn said sternly, hauling herself to her feet.

Q blew out an explosive sigh, but raised his hand. “Fine, but don’t try and convince me you aren’t going to miss this.”

A snap was all that heralded the change between the heavy hoop skirt and wrecked hair to her uniform and sleek ponytail. She nearly stumbled from the weight change. Around her, her crew turned about, going to their stations and checking on the ship’s status.

“All systems normal, Captain,” Harry reported. “The supernovas have stopped and it appears some of the damage they did has been repaired.”

“I guess even the Q don’t want to be the jerk trying to split the check when they’ve been ordering top shelf all night,” Tom said, calculating their heading, obviously waiting for her order.

“Set course for home, Tom, warp 6,” she said. “I’m officially declaring myself off-duty. Chakotay, you have the bridge.”

*****

Kathryn set aside her dinner plate and swirled her glass of wine, staring out into the dark of space.

Meeting little Q and being named his godmother was bittersweet for Kathryn. She had never considered Q’s offer viable, but it had certainly gotten her thinking about things she had put on indefinite hold since their ill-timed journey began. Kathryn was not a young woman anymore and though plenty of medical advancements existed to lengthen a woman’s fertile period, it was still a dangerous prospect for most women only a little older than her. She had no delusions about finding a deux ex machina that would send them home in time to make a long-awaited family with Mark. She was, rather, resigned.

_Mark_. She had not thought about him in months until Q had shown up. Even then, it had been a perfunctory thought, a vague fantasy. Justin--beautiful, amazing Justin--had been her first thought. With him, it hadn’t been some vague desire for children and family, it had been the thought of having children with _him_. Two boys and a girl, all brunette and beautiful.

Her door chime interrupted her musings and she called for entrance, unconcerned with her casual top and loose hair. Still, she was relieved to see that it was Tom at her door.

“Tom! Please, come in,” she stood and moved a few things off the chair. She gestured him toward it. “What do you need?”

“Captain,” he acknowledged, taking a seat. His hands, previously behind his back, appeared and he was holding a package. “Word’s gotten around that you were made a godmother.” He grinned knowingly.

She smirked with some chagrin in return. “Godmother of a god. Not entirely sure how I’m supposed to feel about it,” she admitted.

“Well, anyway,” he handed her the package. “This was my mother’s. I wanted you to have it.”

Her mouth dropped open a little and her cheeks heated. “Tom, I couldn’t-”

“I want you to have it. She, she left it to me to give to, I don’t know, my daughter or godmother of my daughter, but I think that ship has sailed.”

She rolled her eyes, “You’re barely over thirty, Tom.”

He smiled, but it was no smirk or grin. It was a soft little thing that made him look younger than any boyish grin. “Please, take it.”

She gave in and took the box. She pulled off the simple wrapping and lifted the top. Nestled in velvet was a beautiful, antique pendant on a thick gold chain. It was a curio, ivory on pale green.

“This is beautiful, Tom,” she whispered. She flipped the pendant over and saw the name _Eileen_ and the date _October 5, 2002_.

“My great aunt, however many generations back, was godmother to her younger sister, my great however many times over grandmother. Girls run in our family.”

She laughed, reaching for another of the stemless wine glasses and pouring a measure in it for Tom.

“Seriously,” he said, laughing too, taking the proffered glass with a nod. “I’ve got two sisters. My mom had four. Boys are few and far between on her side.”

They calmed. “Thank you, Tom, this was incredibly kind of you.” He smiled again, before thoughtful look came over his face as they stared at one another.

“I was just thinking,” he explained. “About, well, last year and the warp 10 flight.”

She flushed involuntarily and cursed herself. She had been the one to be upfront with him about the whole situation. But that had been under the bright lights of Sickbay with the Doctor in the next room. Now, in the dim light of her quarters, even wearing more clothing than she had been that day, she felt the ridiculous urge to hide. 

“That might have been my only chance to have kids,” he chuckled. “Little lizards. You know the Doc said there were two boys and a girl? Must have been your genes.”

“I only have a sister,” she said, lamely. 

He shrugged. “Do you think about it?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “More often I think about... the missed opportunities. I’ve been engaged twice now, you know.”

“I knew about,” he stopped, looking sorry he brought it up. “I knew about both, yes.”

“Children were never a priority until I met Justin,” she looked away. “With Mark it was just... expected. A couple years on Voyager and then a family. Then, back on a ship, admiralty maybe.” She laughed. “And like you said, all I’ve managed are lizards.”

“And now you’re thinking it’ll never happen,” Tom said, who saw the line between Captain and friend and dove right over it. She supposed she had opened up the floor to whatever comment he wanted to make, and now she had to live with it, decorum be damned.

“Seventy years is a bit beyond even the most optimistic medical advances.”

“Why not now?” Apparently, the wine had loosened Tom’s tongue as well, and his wasn’t a tongue that needed much encouragement.

She scoffed and took a large sip of wine, unwilling to take him to task or reassert her authority. She averted her eyes even as she felt a bitter smile twist her mouth.

“Seriously,” he leaned forward and there was a glint in his eyes that had nothing to do with the low light and the bright stars. “What’s stopping you? The crew? Some Victorian notion that you can only have kids with the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with?”

She stared at him, her mouth open. “Tom, I couldn’t. There’s no--” she cut that comment off. “And I’m the Captain, I can’t just decide to have a child.”

“There’s no one on board you’d consider having a child with?” He asked, as if he had stolen the comment right off her tongue. “Not Chakotay?”

“You’re out of line,” she said, trying to sound steely and actually sounding tired and little incredulous.

“I think the line is still out in the hall,” Tom said. “Captain, you of all people deserve whatever will make you happy. If that’s a kid then you shouldn’t let the crew, the ship, or the damn Delta Quadrant stop you.”

“How would I even handle the responsibility?” she asked, standing and throwing her hands up. “This is the first day off I’ve taken that hasn’t been mandated by the Doctor in three years! If you had come here any other night, I would have still been at my desk reading the dozens of reports I get every day. Error reports, repairs, updates, personnel--

“So, delegate! Chakotay should be handling at least half of those reports and distilling them down to the bare essentials and you know he gets reports from the departments. You know all of this, I know you do. You worked for my father.”

“I was the one doing the distilling,” she recalled. Her scalp was prickly and heated with both the implication that she wasn’t doing her job correctly and that she wasn’t capable of taking on the responsibilities she had. She knew he was right on some level, but this was _her_ ship.

“Exactly. Maybe you need to stop thinking of yourself as the Captain and start thinking of yourself as the Admiral.”

“I think you’ll recall, as I do, that our fathers weren’t around all that much when they became Admirals,” she circled back to the original topic with a small, sickening thrill at the cruelty of her statement.

Tom’s face was, as usual, blank as she mentioned their childhoods--so similar and yet so different. She remembered the crippling self-doubt that had pushed her to be the best, no matter what it cost her in her personal life. Tom had the same self-doubt, but it had only pushed him into testing his boundaries and his father’s boundaries along with them.

“That was Starfleet’s fault. Well, in your father’s case, it was Starfleet’s fault,” he shrugged.

“Probably the Cardassians can take some of the blame,” she said dryly. She huffed and plopped herself back on the sofa. She filled up their glasses. She figured they were in this deep already, she might as well bolster her own liquid courage. She bit back her annoyance and fears, committing herself to the discussion. “And no, I’m not waiting for Prince Charming to come waltzing through that door with a sack of coffee beans and a ring. But there’s something to be said for sharing something like this with someone you care about.”

“So, Q is out, Chakotay is out. Who does that leave?” He smirked. “Poor Harry.”

It was so unexpected she was startled into an unattractive laugh, her wine sloshing a little onto the couch.

“You are terrible,” she gasped. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked, looking for the world like he knew exactly what she meant.

“You just blow right past the line like you’re meant to be there.”

“Helps being a ‘Fleet brat. I know all the tricks,” he looked down into his wine and seemed to be gathering a breath. “I had the biggest crush on you, you know. Back when Kathleen was practically ready to worship at the altar of Kathryn Janeway, she’d found a photo of you with Dad and loved you on sight. I was enamored too. I kept trying to come up with reasons for him to bring you home for dinner or something. I think I was working up the nerve to propose if Kathleen didn’t get there first.”

She stared at him. “You’re joking.”

“It’s the whole truth,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have liked me if you’d met me then,” she said, certain. “I didn’t much like myself.”

“Bullshit.”

She shook her head. “Striving for perfection so your father will tell you he’s proud of you takes its toll.”

He sobered, “Know that feeling, a little.”

Almost in silent agreement, they both sat back and relaxed, cradling and sipping wine, not saying much at all.

“Suppose I could choose you,” she said in a voice that was trying to be light. “Least we already know the genes are compatible.”

His mouth had fallen open with astonishment. Kathryn couldn’t believe she’d said it and didn’t dare look him in the eye. She knocked back her glass with a wince and reached for the wine bottle. As she did, he reached for her hand and stopped her. Their hands clenched around the neck of the bottle.

“We do, don’t we,” Tom asked rhetorically. 

“Tom, no, I was just--” she said, trying to dislodge his hand.

“Why not? I mean, I know the obvious why nots, but if you’re game and I’m game, I don’t see that it’s a problem.”

Kathryn was beyond mortified. She couldn’t look Tom in the eye. She stared at their hands and refrained from chewing her bottom lip. She consciously controlled her breath, but couldn’t cool the heat in her cheeks. She knew Tom and she knew what the gift he had brought her meant to him.

“You want children of your own, Tom,” she said quietly. “I know you do. Why else would you have this?” She gestured to the box, pulling the wine away finally and poured another measure in each glass. “Why else would you bring it on a mission that was only supposed to last three weeks?”

She looked up at him. He was staring at her softly. She stood, light-headed and red-faced. She turned away, but from the corner of her eye saw him rise too, eyes wide and expression apologetic.

“I’m sorry, I’m so--you didn’t need to know that. Damnit,” he said, running a hand through his inexorably thinning hair.

She stared out the window and threw back her wine like the shots Lettie used to make her do. She winced and licked her lips.

“I always thought you resented me,” she admitted. “Based on that first meeting.”

“Maybe a little,” he said lowly, “But I was too busy trying not to be ashamed.”

She turned her head and looked at him quizzically. 

“I was in _prison_ ,” he reminded her. “Not exactly the most illustrious first impression.”

She smiled a little, “I already knew all about you, Tom. You can choose not to believe it, but I used to be envious of you. Your father used to talk everyone’s ear off about you.”

He gaped a little. “He did not.”

She let out a tired chuckle, “I even once complained to my own father about it. Because he’d never told me he was proud of me even though I tried so hard.”

His face crumpled a little. “Guess that’s where we were different. I never complained. I just assumed I was a disappointment.”

It wasn’t her job to fix him, but she desperately wanted to try. “I wasn’t really prepared for this conversation,” she said with a little laugh.

“It’s been a doozy, for sure,” Tom agreed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like I said, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I-I just wanted to do something for you. I didn’t mean for it to get out of hand.”

“I don’t know if I could ever, on Voyager,” she said, hoping he caught on without her having to lay everything out. “I have a responsibility and I know myself too well, but I’m also changing… well, nearly every day. There are things I’ve done in the past year that I would be cringing over if all of this hadn’t happened.”

“Not now, but maybe later,” he summed up.

She smiled ruefully and cocked an eyebrow. “Sometimes, Tom, I think it’s not the ‘Fleet upbringing, you’re just reading my mind.”

He smiled back, “Believe me, ma’am, I’m the last person who should be allowed mind reading powers.”

“Well, try cultivating them. I’m counting on you to know me better than I know myself.”

“Pretty hefty responsibility.”

“You’ve got a head start,” she said softly. She picked up the curio out of the box, rubbing her thumb over the raised surface. She looked back at him and approached. She saw his eyes widen as she lifted to her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you again, Tom.”

His smile grew even as his eyes remained wide. “My pleasure, ma’am. I’ll keep you up to date on any changes,” he said with a final wink before taking his leave.

That night, Kathryn dreamed of towheaded girls and a lone, mischievous boy, and hoped that Tom really did have mind reading powers.


End file.
